Next week is Election Day, which in an off-cycle year as this typically generates as much excitement, relatively speaking, as a Zamboni race. This year is not really an exception, except for three things:

1) The fact that there are some national implications in a couple of races around the country.

2) The general ascendency of vitriol in politics that has infested even the lowest levels of governance, making every city council and school board election a plebiscite on the survival of civilization.

3) The fact that – well, local politics tend to have a greater impact on our daily lives than the nonsense that happens in D.C., so, maybe the fate of civilization does hinge on a couple local contests.

Nationally, all political eyes are on the Virginia governor’s race between former governor, and former Democratic National Committee Chairman, Terry McAuliffe, and Republican Glenn Youngkin. It’s a race that is worth watching, and not only because it has turned exceptionally nasty in the last few days as McAuliffe’s poll numbers have plummeted to the point where the once presumed front-runner is now polling, at best, neck-and-neck with Younkin, with some polls even showing Younkin with a lead.

Why does this matter? Well, if McAuliffe wins by a convincing amount, it doesn’t, really. It simply means a Democrat in an erstwhile blue state, with phenomenal name recognition and all the advantages normally bestowed upon an incumbent, wins an election he was widely expected to win. Yawn-inducing stuff, which will result in little more than resurrection of the perennial announcement that the science of polling is dead.

If, however, Youngkin manages to win – or, for that matter, comes within a few percentage points of doing so – it’s a different story altogether. It’s easy to read too much into these elections, and we all probably will, but the Virginia race is looked at as a bellwether, and it is certainly fair to say that a Younkin victory would all but stop the progressive agenda, as adopted by President Biden, in its tracks.

Any second thoughts Senator Joe Manchin might be having about abandoning reason and good sense and going along with the program would vanish. The lights of reason would illuminate in more than a few moderate Democrats in threatened seats around the country as well, and all of a sudden budget reconciliation as a vehicle for overnight social and economic revolution return to being a thing of left-wing dreams. Even a razor-thin McAuliffe victory, given all of his inherent advantages, would have a similar effect.

Meanwhile, back in Colorado, what is on the ballot may be of less national intrigue, but is pretty important locally. School board races around the state are drawing money, attention and vitriol. Mask and vaccine mandates are taking center stage though, important as these issues are, they are really just sideshows to some more serious and endemic issues plaguing public education.

There are also battles about the teaching of Critical Race Theory. It’s an esoteric bit of ideological quackery that is entertaining in the academic sense and perfectly fine to explore and debate in a post-secondary examination of fringe political thought – but entirely inappropriate for K-12 education.

Even that debate is merely symptomatic of the larger struggle over the purpose of education itself – whether it is to produce a generation of literate citizens with skills and knowledge in mathematics, history, science, and the like, or if it is merely a grand social experiment which views the imparting of civilizational knowledge as an anachronistic cleaving to a colonial patriarchic past.

Education is also central in one of the three statewide initiatives on next weeks ballot. The other two focus on reduction of property taxes and a restoration of the legislative function to the legislative branch when it comes to allocation of federal money showered on the state.

But proposition 119 offers a bit of an elegant solution to the problem of dismal education performance within the public schools – by taxing marijuana sales and using the proceeds to fund after-school education programs. That’ll include tutoring, gifted-and-talented programs, STEM, second languages, arts, music (God forbid, remedial manners and grammar?), with priority being given to lower-income kids, which is appropriate.

It’s not a magic pill that will cure all our public education woes, but it is an admirable start, and addresses an almost universal concern.

Three issues are driving the Virginia election: education, the economy and crime. It is tough for any Democrat to campaign on the economy right now, and will only become harder in the next few years. And most Democrats are as terrified of the crime issue as the average person is of walking alone at night along an inner-city street.

That leaves education, an issue which McAuliffe tripped over himself by suggesting that parents ought to have no input on what their children learn in school. He has since desperately struggled to walk back that remark, but the fact that it is such a motivating issue – nationally and locally – makes this election a whole lot more fun to watch.